“Stop your whining, Léo! You’re making no sense. You’ve turned me into a scapegoat, and I’m paying for all of you, so you don’t have to worry. It’s as if you’ve acquired five years of virtue by pointing the finger at vice. Who profits from this business? By blackening me, you’ve cleaned yourselves up and come out white as snow. And you dare complain? And to me?”
“You need treatment, Zachary. I don’t think you realize you committed a crime. You raped a woman! While your own wife was just a few yards away, throwing a party in your honor, you forced yourself on a poor woman! For heaven’s sake, stop acting the victim! You’re the aggressor.”
Zachary Bidermann shrugged. He hated this version of the facts.
Taking his silence for an act of contrition, Léo Adolf assumed he had got through to Zachary and softened his tone. “What are you going to do for the next few weeks?”
“Give lectures. Several universities around the world consider me to be an expert on the world economy. They don’t think the tribulations of my penis affect my intellectual abilities. Fortunate, don’t you think?”
Actually, Zachary was lying. Several universities had cancelled his lectures, either because the teaching staff had demanded it, or because groups of students—female students, especially—had protested, with banners held high, that they refused to listen to a pervert. In an attempt to counter this campaign, Zachary had written an article entitled The Puritans and their Extermination Camps, in which he denounced the confusion of competence with conventional morality. In his opinion, American puritan ideology was trying to standardize the planet, impose its own model of bland morality, and only promote standard individuals to important positions. “And yet,” Zachary Bidermann wrote, “the world’s history is bursting with libertines who were an asset to their people and puritans who destroyed them. Who would you choose, the chaste Hitler or the free Churchill? There is nothing to indicate that intelligence, a sense of responsibility, an ability to make brilliant hypotheses are the exclusive prerogative of good fathers who are faithful to their wives. On the contrary . . . Before this scandal besmirched my name, millions of people went to sleep at night believing I was a good economist; overnight I became incompetent. Where’s the connection? You don’t have to share my lifestyle, you may even disapprove of some of my excesses, but you cannot kill the whole man, his career, his studies, his thoughts, his expertise because of one detail. The attitude of my critics is reminiscent of the worst days in History, when Nazis would condemn music because it had been composed by Jews, burn Jewish literature, Jewish philosophy, Jewish science, and then despoil Jews of their wealth. These racists considered just one element of a man: his Jewishness, which was enough to condemn the rest of him. Unfortunately, we know how far this rejection went: since a Jew must no longer breathe or reproduce, it was off to the death camps with them! These days, pouting and putting their hands on their hearts, protesting their virtuous intentions, puritans engage in the same kind of extermination! Whether a Nazi or a puritan, a fascist is still a fascist. The devil is good at changing his appearance . . . ” Alas, this virulent piece only succeeded in alienating his remaining bastions of support: Jewish associations, which immediately denounced the connection Zachary made between the Holocaust and his personal troubles. As a result, contrary to what he claimed, Zachary had been asked to deliver his analyses only by the rejects of the system, the extremists of Right and Left, people whose spokesperson he would never have wanted to be in the past . . .
“Where are you going to live?” Léo Adolf asked.
“I have a villa in the Ardennes. I inherited it from my father.”
“Alone?”
“For the time being.”
“Give me your contact details.”
“I don’t have them handy,” Zachary Bidermann lied. “I’ll send them to you.”
Léo Adolf pretended to believe him.
“I’ll see you soon, I hope, Zachary. And please, from now on, whatever you decide to do, keep a low profile. Remember the proverb ‘The nail that sticks out will be hammered down.’”
Zachary sighed and hung up, regretting that one of the most unpleasant aspects of his new situation was that everybody seemed to think it their right to give him advice on how he should behave. Then he quickly thought over what he still had to do this morning: the files from his office having already been packed by Singer, all that remained for him was to make sure that the servants on the private floor had finished putting his clothes into protective covers and to gather his own personal effects.
So he went up into his bedroom, where open cupboards revealed empty shelves. Rose was out. Zachary couldn’t work out whether she was being tactful to ease his departure, or whether it was yet another sign of her indifference to him.
In the bathroom his wife had assigned him, he pulled out his belongings: razor, creams, shampoos . . . He tore out a hair that was protruding from his ear, then urinated.
Surrounded by mirrors, he saw his reflection, an elderly, overweight man with his penis in his hands. Was this the man who had set off a media storm? How absurd! He held his penis in his palm and examined it: it was wrinkled, amorphous, with purplish skin. Was this what that had destroyed his ambitions? This misshapen thing? This appendage that had ceased to be functional? For a moment, he felt so wretched that he pressed his forehead against the tiled wall to avoid swaying.
He hadn’t used his cock for weeks. In police custody, he had refrained from touching it, fearing he would substantiate the erotic obsession he was accused of. On his release, he hadn’t dared either pleasure himself or call a prostitute. Even within the four walls of the bathroom, he felt as if eyes or cameras were watching him, or as if a female judge might leap out at any moment, wag her finger, and shout, “It’s him! Look what the pig is doing!” The pressure of fear had replaced sexual pressure. As for Rose, she hadn’t wanted him anywhere near her and had exiled him to a guest room, the smallest one there was, right up in the attic. When he had begged her forgiveness, she had looked away. Rose loved him as a winner, not as a penitent or a casualty. Besides, since that woman Diane—who was she, anyway?—had come between them, Rose and Zachary had been living like strangers under the same roof, on different floors, aware that they must avoid each other.
He heard someone clearing their throat outside the door. Zachary buttoned himself up and came out. It was the butler, who informed him that “a young lady” wanted to see him.
Surprised, Zachary demanded to know her name.
“You won’t know it. But she told me she was sure you would recognize her.”
Zachary tried to decipher the butler’s thoughts beneath his deadpan expression: he must be imagining it was one of his mistresses. Was he wrong?
“Ask her to wait in my former office, Benoît, I’m coming down.”
Inscrutable as he was, the butler blinked at the mention of the “former office,” which suggested that Zachary’s departure was imminent.
Zachary put his last few things in a bag and, five minutes later, went downstairs.
As he walked in, a young woman stood up, clutching her hands to her stomach, shoulders slumped, as if crushed by the protocol of this mansion.
“Mademoiselle?”
Embarrassed, she tilted her head to one side and stared at him with dark-ringed eyes. He recognized her: it was the waitress he had followed down to the cellar on that fatal evening.
She knew he had placed her.
They looked at each other, both standing motionless, trying to get used to each other, then Zachary regained his composure, asked her to sit down, and walked behind his desk, fiddling with his cell phone.
She sat down, placed her bag on her lap, her body tense and contained, as if she was waiting on an uncomfortable seat for a bus. At last she took the initiative. “I’ve been following it all on TV.”
“You have?”
“I saw that
woman who claims that . . . At first, I didn’t know why she was doing that, because nothing happened to her, she was just hiding in a corner, watching. I even thought at first she’d intervened out of a concern for justice. Then I worked it out. She’s an artist, an ambitious woman, she took advantage of the situation to get everybody talking about her. Now she’s famous. I hate her.”
She spoke monotonously, in a flat, thin, pitchless voice, with no particular emphasis or passion in her words. It was as if she was reciting a shopping list, not referring to a terrible event that had marked her deeply.
As a way of encouraging her, Zachary Bidermann smiled.
“I’ve been thinking,” she went on. “If you like, I’ll tell the police it was me.”
“You’d do that?”
“I’ll do even better than that. I’ll tell them she stole my handkerchief. And especially that you and I, when we . . . did it, we agreed. That I consented.”
She had uttered these words looking down at her shoes. She was forcing herself to speak a text she had prepared. Had she trained herself to go through with a scene that went against her self-effacing nature?
“Why would you do that?”
She raised her head and looked at a spot next to him. “For money, of course.”
He nodded. “Everything belongs to my wife. I don’t have all that much money.”
“But you have more than me!” She had lost her reticence. Poverty, trying to make ends meet, bare cupboards and closets, lack of secure accommodation: none of that was abstract. Her cry came from a place of genuine pain.
“How much?” Zachary murmured.
She swallowed and made every effort to be brave and, this time, look him straight in the eye. “One million euros.”
He nodded again. One million euros? It was possible . . . He looked her up and down briefly. Was there someone putting her up to this? A boyfriend? A brother? Someone who had advised her to come here, someone who’d made her rehearse this scene? Or was she here on her own initiative?
Never mind. She was giving him the opportunity to get rid of his adversary, Petra von Tannenbaum, who would be seen for the liar she had always been. If the girl denied it had been rape, then he would come out of the trial with his head held high, his rights restored.
That was certainly worth one million euros.
But what would he have left afterwards? Not a penny. As for his positions, as European Competition Commissioner and as Rose’s husband, he would never recover them. Not to mention the jackpot of being prime minister . . . Politically, he was dead. “I refuse,” he declared.
Startled, she bit her lip, leaned forward, and murmured, “If you want, I can do it for less.”
“One million euros or less, I won’t pay.”
“But—”
“It’s my final word.”
She looked around nervously. “So what I suggest isn’t acceptable to you?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“What do you mean, it doesn’t matter?”
“It doesn’t.”
She stood up and cried feverishly, “Well, too bad. I’ll go anyway and tell them what really happened. I want the truth to come out. Why does everyone always have to take everything from me? You who . . . and that German woman who’s playing at being a victim instead of me. I’m going to report both of you, the liar and the bastard.”
“You’ll be making a lot of effort for nothing. Nobody will believe you.”
“Why not?”
“Because if the first accuser can be proved to be a liar, it’ll be easy to say so’s the second one.”
“Really?”
“It’ll be a walkover for an experienced lawyer. Especially since I’ve recorded our conversation on my phone . . . ” He brandished his cell phone. “All I have to do is produce the beginning of the tape, where you offer to state for money that it was you, not Petra von Tannenbaum. You’ll look like a blackmailer.”
“That’s disgusting!” the young woman shouted.
Zachary Bidermann didn’t reply.
She looked around for a way to hold back the emotion that was overwhelming her. She was shaking, her eyes had turned red, and her teeth were chattering. “So they’ve taken everything from me, I’ve been made to do something I didn’t want to, I’ve been forced to do disgusting stuff just because I’m a lousy servant, my life is stolen from me, even my problems, nobody wants to give me a cent . . . and they won’t even listen to me when I tell the truth? Well, I guess I’m worth nothing. Nothing at all. Nobody gives a shit about my life, about what I feel or say . . . ” She looked up at Zachary Bidermann with tear-filled eyes. “It’s ugly!” She swallowed the snot that was choking her. “Life’s really ugly!”
On an abrupt impulse, she picked up her bag and almost ran out of the room.
Zachary Bidermann went to the window. The girl was crossing Place d’Arezzo, her shoulders hunched, her face buried in a handkerchief, her cheap bag flapping about on her arm, small, awkward, graceless, a victim of everything, her birth, her poverty, society, men . . .
He suddenly panicked. Patches of heat radiated through his body. What was the matter with him? With a trembling hand, he wiped the sweat from his forehead. Was he about to faint? Was he having a heart attack?
He sat at his desk, drank a glass of cold water, and tried to steady his breathing.
Yes, he was getting better. His body wasn’t letting him down. He breathed.
His mind was filled with the image of the young woman, all-consuming, obsessive. “It’s disgusting!” she had cried. “They’ve taken everything from me.”
For the first time, Zachary Bidermann realized he had raped a woman. Yes, she was his prey and he the hunter. He had used her like an insignificant object, just so that he could soothe an itch that was ruining his evening. Forcing her to touch his cock, to make him come, hadn’t seemed monstrous to him at the time—it had given him pleasure—even though he knew the act didn’t correspond to any desire or logic in the young woman’s life. I’m a bastard! He was becoming aware of his crime. Before, he had thought only about himself, his flattering idea of himself. Before, he had attacked his accusers, not imagining for a second that he could have committed a bad act himself, not he, not the brilliant Zachary, not the genius Zachary, not the pleasure-seeker the weaker sex liked so much.
His throat was constricted with anguish. He took a breath of air, undid his tie and his top button. He needed air. He needed to escape himself, to flee this intolerable sense of guilt. He wandered around his office as if floating, empty, poor, disgusted, sick. Reality was no longer bearable.
“Benoît, I’m going out for a stroll. I’ll be back.”
He had to leave this grand town house where he had strutted for years, even up to a few seconds earlier. He unbolted the door and hurtled down the stairs.
The air was like a slap in the face. Zachary suddenly felt scared, scared of the city, of the cars, of the noisy motorcycles, of the silent bicycles. Was he familiar with these sidewalks? He felt like a newborn baby. Everything surprised and frightened him. He had lost his bearings.
He who had never seen danger now saw it everywhere. Inside him as well as outside. What could he do? He was terrified, shaking more than a leaf.
Walk! Yes, walk to clear his head.
He walked quickly. Crossing the street, he looked up, startled, at a blue macaw who was defending his nest from an aggressive crow. At that split second, he didn’t see the truck charging at full speed onto Place d’Arezzo, and fell headlong beneath its five tons of steel.
POSTLUDE
LUX PERPETUA
On the brightest day of the year, the summer solstice, the residents of Place d’Arezzo were in the habit of organizing a “neighborhood party.” Under the trees, amid the blooming rhododendrons, each person would bring his or her own choice of food or drink. Some would b
ring pies, pizzas, cakes, or salads, others punch, wine, fruit juice, or beer. They would set up folding tables, open canvas chairs, plug in a stereo in this makeshift, open-air living room, and, lulled by a melodious sunset, the local residents would take the place of the birds and watch the theater provided by the façades from the vantage point of the parrots.
The arrangement of the houses, though, was reflected, unchanged in the arrangement of the people: the villas on one side and the apartment blocks on the other. The rich toasted with the rich, the less well-off with the less well-off, the young kept to the young. Social classes, cliques with shared interests, and age-related communities would be reproduced on the grass.
There were those who stuck to their group, like Quentin with his pals, and Albane with her girlfriends—a habit from childhood—in the secret hope of joining other groups later. Some came in couples, like Victor and Oxana, who were inseparable now. Some kept to themselves, like Baptiste, Joséphine, and Isabelle, who were roaring with laughter over a bottle of Burgundy, forming a cluster it would have been difficult to break up. They were probably trying to avoid Faustina and Patrick Breton-Mollignon, who were coming closer and looking for an excuse to interrupt them. Zachary Bidermann’s death had changed Rose’s habits: in previous years, she had sent a crate of champagne accompanied by a note excusing her absence. This time, though, she was mixing with the throng, in the company of Diane, who introduced her husband Jean-Noël. Ève had joined Ludo and Claudine on a sunbed, where they were sharing not just space but a joint. A little farther on, Philippe Dentremont, his wife Odile at his side, watched them with a mixture of disapproval and envy. On the central path, François-Maxime de Couvigny had organized a game of bowls with his children, and had been joined by Patricia and Hippolyte. Wim had only dropped by for five minutes, voluble, eager to please, apologizing a hundred times for being unable to stay, leaving behind, as his ambassador, the smiling Meg with boxes of chocolates that she offered everyone, making sure she also helped herself to them. As for Tom and Nathan, they had decided to contribute by setting up a barbecue: and here was Nathan handing Marcelle a grilled merguez sausage with the comment, “Sausages are my specialty.” Already flushed from the punch, Marcelle shed a little tear at the thought that Mademoiselle Beauvert was not among them this year, although she was lucky enough to be living in Washington, with Obama.